Observant readers will know that we have been hammering home the message this year that “Shape is the new king” – we first brought that phrase to the world’s attention back in Amsterdam at the ISE DOOH Summit in February 2009.

Something my old boss at Intel used to tell me is “why predict the future when you can invent the future” and as we have been involved in helping Christie Digital for almost two years now in bringing the ground breaking MicroTiles screen display system to market it is something we always knew would happen and would come to pass.

Christie Digital’s formal introduction this week of MicroTiles is what we have always said it would be, a major inflexion point for the screen industry.

MicroTiles will have a major impact in the architecture, rental / staging and control room space but will also see a major USD 400 Million dollar turnover business, i.e Christie Digital enter the DIgital Out of Home industry sector.

Make no bones about it, this is a company that is going to be a major player in the marketplace.

Traditional screen companies who have very much rested on their laurels, and simply driven down price but not innovated will likely see their sales fall off a cliff as retailers especially see what can be done with MicroTiles.

Welcome to DOOH, Christie Digital!

Now we’ll take a detailed look at an example applying the formula to Christie Digital’s innovative new modular screen display system, MicroTiles, which has just been announced.

Shown below is one of the screen shapes which was on display earlier this year to those invited to a private, yet comprehensive product showcase at Infocomm in Orlando.

A skyscraper made of MicroTiles

This particular screen shape was called ’skyscraper’, i.e. with reference to a city’s skyline and a whole mixture of clever content was designed especially for this screen.

The image shown was one small part of a dynamic sequence for Barcardi Mojito.

You can clearly see that the design elements have been carefully crafted to make the best possible use of this particular (screen) shape.

So how do we describe this screen with the formula? Just giving it a name ’skyscraper’ does not help the content or AV people when putting the whole thing together.

Thinking back to our squared paper example with tile (T) and hole (H) elements, and counting from the bottom left, we look at each row and produce a term describing what we have in each column for that row.

The skyscraper re-defined

There are two type of row definition, a short and long one. The long definition lists each screen element with a single letter, so the bottom row in this case would be “TTTT”.

All well and good for smaller screen arrays, but what about big screens with, say, 16 tiles across? You start to get an awful lot of letters, and that’s just for one row.

So the short version allows you to summarise the number of continuous elements in a row with a number, so in a 16 tile row it would reduce to “16T”, or in the case of this Skyscraper, “4T”.

Geek alert: the more technically minded will recognise this method as run-length encoding – hopefully we’ve kept it simple enough here to be easily understood, Ed

A side effect of using the short row definition is that shorter rows with different screen elements could actually take longer to describe than using the long definition – in the Skyscraper, row 4 is shown here as “HTTH” (long definition), but using the short definition it becomes “1H2T1H” which ends up slightly longer!

This is why we have both types, and each row term can use either long or short version as appropriate in the same formula for the overall screen. In the diagram above, we have used the short version for rows 1-3, and the long version in rows 4 and 5.

So for each row we produce a term of letters (and sometimes numbers) which describe the row. See the diagram for the row term for each row in this Skyscraper screen.

Then we put them together in order, starting with row 1 (from the bottom up) with an underscore character between each one.

At the start of the code, we put the number of screen elements of the overall square shape bounding the screen, with the letter X between them.

So starting from bottom left again, there are 4 across by 5 up, making it “4X5″.

This term goes at the front of the code, and tells you two useful things:-

1. the overall size of the screen (depending on what technology your screen elements are)
2. the aspect ratio that the screen is

Assuming a standard aspect video image is displayed over the whole screen area, you can then tell if the image will be stretched anamorphically or not – if the screen is a 1X3, then the image will be stretched vertically, for example.

Putting it all together, all this makes the complete formula for this Skyscraper screen example: _4X5_4T_4T_3T1H_HTTH_HTHH_

As implied in the previous posts, see The ‘Issy-Neale Formula’ Explained Part 1 and The ‘Issy-Neale Formula’ Explained Part 2, this sequence of characters can now be used at whatever level you like in your planning, content creation, scheduling, and distribution processes.

• Those with the capability for custom software development can use it to automatically sort content for scheduling and distribution.
• Those who want to keep up a good level of co-ordination between third parties could standardise on using the formula in their business processes to make sure everyone knows exactly what they are talking about when dealing with screen shapes.
• Those who are designing bespoke content for different shapes can attach the formula to the filenames, folders or other database-style meta data for each piece of content.

Gloucester Quays Digital 6-Sheets

VMG have just snapped up the contract at the Trafford Centre for the large LED that ASG Media initially had AND (better still, for VMG) have grabbed the contract for the already installed digital 6-sheets at Gloucester Quays.

This latter contract is particularly good. The kit is already ‘in the ground’, it’s modern, the right way round (i.e. portrait rather than TVs hanging from the ceiling) and Clear Channel must suddenly love VMG!

RNS Number : 2335C RAM Investment Group PLC 10 November 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10th November 2009
RAM INVESTMENT GROUP PLC

(”RAM” or the “Company”)

TrainFX Limited acquisition of the ASG Network.

RAM announces developments regarding TrainFX Limited (”TrainFX”), a company in which RAM holds a 49.9% stake. TrainFX, the developer of passenger information, media, communication and security systems for the rail sector, has acquired the business and assets of ASG Media Group (”ASG”) including certain assets of ASG Media Plc and the business and assets of ASL Media Limited and Freelance Media Limited.

ASG was a leading digital out of home specialist Media Company which went into administration on 2 November 2009. TrainFX will now commence investing in stabilising, improving and enhancing the existing ASG network in order to provide both shopping malls and advertisers with a more robust offering.

The ASG network will now be able to benefit from specialist technical support from Train FX, which has previously supplied software and technical support for other out of home media companies.

Alongside Arsenal Media we were the first content house to get our hands on a MicroTile and we were tasked with creating content for a range of applications where this product might be used – from Retail Environments, to Control Rooms, Digital Out Of Home Advertising scenarios to Public Spaces and Corporate Receptions. A huge variety of content and creative that would test any new screen in the marketplace.

When we first got our hands on the MicroTiles we were like kids in a sweetshop – how does it work, what is the quality really like, do the units really just “click” together to make multiple shapes and sizes? After a few hours it became apparent that all our expectations were being met and well exceeded. And you simply cannot do justice with the written word as to the clarity and definition of this screen.

Due to the way in which the image is displayed and the technology involved, when you first see the image your initial instinct is to reach out and touch it, it is SO lifelike. There is absolutely no pixellation and the only way to describe the resulting image is that it has the quality of a hi resolution actual printed image but on a digital screen. What makes this kind of incredible image possible? 2 things from a visual/creative point of view – Blacks are REALLY BLACK – if you look at the black on an LCD or LED, the actual colour is a dark reflected grey NOT true black. On MicroTiles, Black really is very Black and this provides the designer with a massive range of contrast to use and so colours look especially good on the screens. Which brings us onto the 2nd point – the colour range. Colours look incredibly saturated and true – vivid, bright and they really pop out at you – which again from a design perspective can make anything you create look visually stunning.

Designing content for a screen such as this means thinking in a number of ’smart’ ways. As the size and shape of the screen changes, so does the resolution – which starts out high in the first place. Dealing with hi resolution imagery as seen in the domain of the Print world does mean you need powerful hardware. The difference is that we aren’t just dealing with a single hi resolution image as in print, but 30 hi resolution frames per second as in the world of video/animation. Most designers in the DOOH space will be used to designing motion graphics of hi resolutions and the various challenges this poses – the difference with MicroTiles is that you are essentially creating even higher resolution moving imagery – so consideration for larger file sizes, increased processing time and disk space need to be taken into account. None of which is insurmountable as most of us have the computing power available to us and the results are certainly worth the effort!

In terms of the actual content and creative, vivid colours and blacks work extremely well and the Microtiles easily handle a range of more subtle shades and lighter colours. Motion is very smooth running at 30fps and the MicroTiles, and the multitude of back-end software playout systems that can be used, handle video content (when at the right resolution) as well as animation very well.

The only way to describe the end result is as Illustrious Moving Print – the blacks are a true black, the colours are saturated yet well defined, the overall clarity is pin sharp, text is legible and crystal clear and movement is smooth and precise. In a nutshell, MicroTiles are everything a moving image designer has been waiting for.

We will have a couple more stories up over the next 24 hours on this exciting new product introduction.

They did a good job. The stand look good and the EYESIGHT kiosk got a lot of traffic.

NCR also had another booth further in the show.

Show and Tell did the best job but that’s not surprising given their credentials. Day 1 of ‘Cooking Up Content: From Concept to Screen‘ saw crowds 4 deep in the aisles listening to the speakers and watching the spectacle.

This was a good initiative by the organisers which would have been all the better if Cisco weren’t involved. I guess they (Cisco) could have sponsored it instead of Harris (thanks Harris) but hey ho that would have involved Cisco putting its hand in its pocket and spending money.

Exhibition and conference organisers take note Cisco are taking the Papa Oscar Sierra Sierra.

Postscript. Show award for best giveaway goes to Harris for their barbeque baster!!! Great giveaway (seriously) – all we need now is an English summer to make use of it

The Coca Cola vending machine worked this time faultlessly and got a lot of interest – it’s amazing what a globally recognised brand, nice design and a digital screen can do. Don’t you think?

He tells us that he already has several clients and projects on the go.

We met briefly at Kioskcom. He said that he sees NCR NetKey expanding outside the US quite quickly.

Contrary to our belief, he said that NCR NetKey would indeed play in the digital signage space.

NCR have a lot of work to do and big corporates who have ‘played’ before have found it tough going. Will be interesting to see how they get on. Time is not with them as we see other corporates; Harris making more (sensible) noise and now NEC launching Vukunet.